For any Americans knowledgeable of our nation’s history, the first quarter of the 21st century begs again asking the same questions raised in 1917 and 1941: Why should black Americans (as well as other non-Anglos and women) bother serving in our nation’s armed forces? Why should we defend the United States?
Through its actions, the second Trump Administration has clearly shown how it devalues the presence of active-duty personnel as well as veterans. Particularly so of blacks wearing or who have worn uniforms.
Bad enough the thieving, lying, traitorous sex abuser once more soiling the Oval Office has had his fifth-a-day lackey Pete Hegseth, a fall-down, blackout drunk, a DUI hire, hollow out the command ranks with as many incompetent yes men as possible. The sole qualification of these stooges who’ll replace capable officers is they’ll be loyal to Fat Caesar, not the Constitution, not the country, not their oaths.
But to literally whitewash our military’s history of non-Anglos, men and women who’ve served valiantly, is greater than criminal. It’s pathological.
Since a sizable portion of Americans have at best a tenuous grasp of this nation’s history, the erasure not only demeans those serving and who have served but makes it possible for upcoming generations to think whites solely provided valor and sacrificed for the United States. They will accept falsehoods as truth. That will allow seeing the underrepresented or altogether missing as never having made significant contributions to the defense of our nation.
This is a lie.
A lie that will open doors to even more low-intelligence Anglos to regard those who’ve been removed from the national epoch as having been shirkers. And those who are serving today or did serve should somehow be diminished figures compared to white comrades-in-arms.
The images and stories of non-Anglos the Defense Department paints over just aren’t errant tiles in our American mosaic. Their inclusion shows all Americans how despite long-held hostility towards non-white military personnel, the nearly excluded have understood themselves as Americans first. This although the white mainstream for the longest was reluctant to acknowledge the obvious.
Left to the scab and Drunk Pete, more Americans will conclude non-Anglos seldom fought or rarely sacrificed for our nation. Such is the sort of mischaracterization which fosters disdain for the “other.” And this nation cannot afford the inadequate, insecure, weak, and ignorant who populate less dynamic America to possess any upper hands against citizens they’ve been spoon fed to believe their inferiors.
It’s striking to resume an argument thought long dead. Must we again wonder whether blacks serving our nation are just as esteemed as its Anglos?
Until the Second Trump Administration, there was no need to ponder this. After President Harry Truman banned segregation in our armed forces, the military eventually did what it does best – follow orders. While we today can’t imagine the initial resistance, the emphasis on cohesion and discipline gradually won out over native bigotry.
When given chances on level playing fields, the soldiers, airmen, and sailors popularly accepted as substandard proved they possessed the mettle. The right stuff. Today, the short-fingered vulgarian and Whiskey Pete wish to regress insofar as our fighting personnel. Rather than see the diverse components working seamlessly for the nation’s good, they prefer a force that keeps blacks not only from advancing but making them as unnecessary as possible towards the services’ essential purpose. That is defending the United States.
Both the shirker and his dipso secretary of defense don’t want to present a multi-hued, multi-ethnic though united force against possible enemies. Instead, these two failures won’t be bothered failing America if their version of a monochromatic phalanx projects a weakened resolve abroad. The ultimate goal of those two is to revive then satisfy biases that previously undermined the idea of America.
They’ve been working hard to jam through their own predilections in a shock value manner. As if it’s inevitable so as to soften resistance and thereby bolster acquiescence. Then from there let it seep insidiously through our societal layers until false appearance is accepted as fact.
Fortunately, the vast majority of Americans don’t share the same susceptibility of the worst of us who marble our communities. Know-nothings who’ve failed through their own paucity of drive and initiative. Losers who believe their own created shortcomings result from all sorts of sinister cabals arrayed against them. Stooges who look into mirrors and refuse seeing what stops them from advancing.
Or even possibly excelling.
The questions asked in 1917 and 1941, the debates each roused during their times, are as valid now as each was during their respective periods.
For the Great War, President Woodrow Wilson exhorted Americans to “preserve democracy.” In Europe. If the thought ever occurred to extend democracy in America, it must’ve been a passing fancy to Wilson. He was one of those Southerners who saw the Civil War as “the Lost Cause.” American forces would fight to save democracy in foreign lands. But expand it in the United States? No.
In Wilson’s and much of mainstream Americans’ eyes, democracy, giving then protecting rights, freedoms, and liberties to “lesser Americans” remained unthinkable. Which is why the excluded debated going to war for America.
Portions of the era’s black intelligentsia posed this good question: Why should their sons, brothers, fathers serve and possibly be sacrificed elsewhere for notions denied them in their own nation? Amazingly, portions of Anglo America heard this sensibility as borderline treason. A sort of tacit acknowledgement that blacks were citizens, no? Because after all foreigners, strangers, outsiders, can’t be accused of treason. They must be tribe members.
One today as then can imagine the nationwide fulminating and logic twisting which went into denying blacks being “Americans” yet needing those declared non-citizens to bear arms for a nation to which none belonged. Those verbal volleys throughout Dixie must’ve sounded like Colonel Cornpone being equally witless against Foghorn Leghorn.
Nonetheless in the more rational precincts among people who understood the perils fighting for the United States would involve, the sole focus became should black men risk themselves for America, how would their nation reward them?
Memories of Reconstruction were still fresh and propagated. The first postbellum decade began atoning for centuries of depravities colonial then American masters had visited upon the enslaved. The freedmen weren’t seeking vengeance or reparations, just places under the sun to seek the American dream.
Unfortunately, the electoral politics of 1876 and the last vestige of slavery, the Electoral College, ended what progress had been made by freed blacks to enter the mainstream. Afterwards, particularly throughout the old Confederacy, unrepentant whites used the machinery of states’ governments to hinder, if not outright forbid, blacks any movement towards enfranchisement.
In those states as well as elsewhere in America, yes, blacks were “free.” Nonetheless they were made to bend under quite legal yokes. Whites discovered lashes can be delivered through other means just as intimidating and painful.
That was the gist of the arguments about whether to serve Wilson’s liberty crusade in Europe. To those blacks, this nation had been exceptionally exclusionary towards adding them in the national mosaic. They argued what would, not should, would be the reward to their participation and sacrifices. More than a few must’ve harangued that Wilson be presented with their demands before even considering fighting “a white man’s war.”
Twenty-first century readers with any conception of Wilson must only imagine him grabbing his horsewhip, hurling curses at the “dusky agitators who dared challenge his mission to save civilization!” Wilson’s being from a fine Virginia family and president of Princeton University as well as having been New Jersey governor did not preclude him as president from introducing segregation in the civil service.
Wilson presided during the Progressive Era. He himself was a cracker. The right occupant for the time would’ve been Theodore Roosevelt resuming the Oval Office or even a wildcard such as an ascendant Eugene Debs. A second full TR term likely would’ve produced a greater, earlier American presence astride the global stage. A Debs’ presidency surely would’ve addressed the economic and social disparities still evident in America today.
Had either progressive won the 1912 Election, then been able to campaign for reelection in 1916, and won, all that may be said about how each would’ve met the Great War’s threat to America is our nation’s response would’ve lacked Wilson messianic certainty. Moreover, blacks and other marginalized Americans would by then have been better woven into the national fabric.
Unfortunately for the United States, Wilson’s desire to make and keep America “a white man’s land” pushed many blacks to look beyond the nation’s “needs” and rightly focus on their own interests. Could their service be leveraged? Could white America be made to recognize them as full-fledged citizens? Could white America extend them the same liberties and privileges of citizenship? Could white America enforce laws equally?
If they decided by gauging Wilson alone, the answer was plain. No. If they hoped for a successful prosecution of the war, a victory realized through their willing participation in it, and a judgment harkening back to Lincoln’s “better angels,” they were also proven mistaken.
Between 350-370,000 blacks enlisted in the American Expeditionary Force that sailed to Europe.
Every American should know blacks fought valiantly during the Great War. Particularly for France. While American generals discounted the effectiveness of “colored troops,” the French saw fighting men being wasted performing menial tasks. The French understood the American high command held back men who should’ve been killing Germans. Black units seconded to French corps fought exceptionally. A fact the then US War Department downplayed.
A question begging asking is “Wonder had blacks refused en masse to join America’s Great War effort?” How would a nation hungry for men have reacted? Would government have acquiesced to demands of less onerous treatment of them and theirs here in the United States? After all, conditions as vile as they were for them in swaths of America, what else might government have introduced to worsen the burden? Nothing short of reintroducing slavery could’ve horrified more.
But as our government then would’ve discovered, people only knowing freedom aren’t so keen of accepting shackles. That’s also a lesson for today.
In the end, skepticism and doubt lost to patriotism. Real patriotism. Not empty flag-waving kind. Reluctance yielded to enlisting.
What persuaded these brave men to contribute to the American war effort was hope that by serving ably and capably, their fellow Americans would recognize them as the worthy citizens they were. That the nation would let them and theirs bloom and flower in the idea of America.
Despite showing valor, the nation to which they returned devalued their service.
The disdain for black veterans in Dixie was worse than it had been for blacks before embarkation. It was blood-driven.
In the South, instead of “heroes’ welcomes” Americans are so renowned for, lowbrow whites went as far as lynching returning black soldiers. This while the mustered-out soldiers still wore army uniforms. These were conscious confirmations that despite displaying bravery and bringing glory to America, really, nothing had changed. Blacks would remain chained to second class, on its lowest rung.
Nonetheless, let me add this because without some relief here and there this dispatch will be grim from start to finish.
Had a cousin who served in the AEF. Like most vets of the conflict, the Depression had him demanding his veterans’ bonus before its due payment date. Anything to relieve the punishing financial circumstance brought on by overinflated stocks bought on margins then further exacerbated by tariffs.
Isn’t it amazing how history is circular?
Of the veterans’ plight, their 1932 Bonus Army march on Washington, the doughboys manifestation brutally put down, their tent cities having been razed by future World War II stalwart Douglas MacArthur, Americans should know. And no, none of that can be taken out of context or recontextualized. Like it or not, it’s American history.
What isn’t known, or little known, is Congress succumbed to the veterans’ demand. It paid out those bonuses before the 1945 due dates.
My cousin collected his payment. If remembered correctly it was $500. He built a house. Yes, he, aided by others, built his home. My father enjoyed repeating that result. I think by the time I heard it, 40 going on 50 years had passed. In the decades between, the cousin had not only raised his family inside that premises, but he and his sons had expanded the home into one where multi-generations could nest comfortably and not one upon another.
Sure. As time goes by, it means less and less. Particularly to more and more Americans losing notions of from whence we’ve come. But back in the 1930s, from first framing into later expansions the “American virtues” much of the country’s mainstream believed blacks incapable of were proudly exhibited. Nothing like dropping a canard on its head by nails hammered into wood, joists supporting floors and ceilings, and shingled roofs to create a sturdy home.
It wasn’t a tarpaper shack.
The Depression and the economic malaise that lingered did nothing to improve black Americans’ standing. The whole world was in a funk, not just America’s most marginalized populaces.
Global financial uncertainty allowed bad men to repeatedly yell simple remedies that appealed to the simpleminded. Fortunately, Americans of that era were nowhere as susceptible, gullible, and easily steered as too large a portion of their present-day inheritors.
While there were right-wing radio screamers polluting the ether, and reactionary circuit riders staining the idea of America with their harangues insisting on division and divisiveness, that era’s generations actually listened to what they heard. What they heard from such red-faced cretins mostly aroused skepticism. Right-wing provocateurs sought to disparage Americans who ought have been seen as strangers. Neighbors, co-workers, who were different, yes, but not the insidious threats who’d wormed into the national being intending to hollow it out and weaken our country.
If only today’s younger generations listened to what’s spooned them. Instead of digesting these identical screeds with the least amount of questioning or accepting them unquestioningly, what if the audiences were less receptive and challenged more? Like their grand- or great-grandparents.
Americans have been fortunate that as time proceeded the legends which shrouded America’s entry into World War II have been exposed. Before, we had been too pure, too virtuous, too “innocent.” Or as it has been properly revised, self-serving, short-sighted isolationism stymied Washington’s foreign policy.
Despite helping win the First World War, a great portion of Americans could not see, did not see, did not want to see, the value of our nation’s involvement, its sacrifices for a possible better world. Who knows what had been expected? Maybe they hoped the effort and loss would just produce a better people in a better country.
If so, let’s understand their disappointment. The United States returned to, the one that resumed as if peacetime 1917 had never been interrupted, fairly shrugged off opportunities to release energies toward equity, fairness, and justice for more Americans. What had been saved besides nebulous democracy for foreigners was making sure affluent and powerful sat more comfortably in their luxury.
There was no reward for those who fought abroad or contributed mightily at home. Black or white or women.
Therefore, when fascists marched and conquered in Spain, in Italy, in Germany, why need any American of that brown- and black-shirted 1930s decade be concerned? The last international intercession had awarded nothing but death, disillusionment, and the Depression. Without a result that brought a better America by brightening the futures of veterans and industrial workers who built the arms, too few Americans could be moved to care.
Except for the meager number of us who recognized the globe’s incipient reactionary dangers. These “premature antifascists” knew best the threat needed halting in its nascent stages in Spain. Maybe Washington knew it, too. But overwhelming domestic sentiment kept America at arms-length. The Japanese had to bomb Pearl Harbor and Hitler must declare war on the Unites States for our national stupefaction to dissipate. Mostly.
For any wondering whether history is circular, the similarities between now and then ought to raise alarms, not prompt yawns. Indifference of nearly 100 ago nearly doomed our country. The same negligence of today may certainly again imperil it.
Yet again as in 1917 with its declarations of war, many blacks on the eve of Pearl Harbor questioned why they should fight for America if summoned. Forget postwar and interwar memories. They lived through over two decades of daily being mashed under the then system’s heels.
While mainstream Americans then – as now – couldn’t comprehend how any American wouldn’t wish to defend this nation, the marginalized who’d served then had been dismissed, forgotten after Armistice. Having been cast aside once hostilities ended, they had every right to expect a repeat of the same should America enter World War II. After all, what during their lives would’ve made them see differently?
Who were the bravest men from the Second World War? Black conscientious objectors. Why fight for any cause whose successful outcome would’ve likely one more ignored those who’d contributed to it?
That was the thinking at the start. Apparently, a surprising segment of mainstream America held the same opinion. This after the Japanese sneak attack and Germany joining its Axis partner against the United States.
A sizable portion of phony patriots initially saw the vastness of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans staving off Axis aggression against the North American continent. A high percentage of them doubtlessly considered reaching accommodations with Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. Probably something along lines of ceding Asia to Japan and letting Germany Aryanize Europe and Russia. Who knew where Africa and Australia might figure in those concessions? Though be assured Tio Sam would place the entirety of Latin America in his protective yet exploitive embrace.
Wonder if this vision integral Orwell’s 1984. That novel’s world had been divided into three totalitarian regimes. Coincidence? Maybe. Neat fit? Surely.
At the start of World War II, Washington understood it had a problem persuading and thoroughly ingraining still adverse Americans for their imminent Great Crusade against fascism. Instead of hiring advertising agencies to sell this soap, the War Department called upon Hollywood to propagandize the conflict for the American advantage.
The Dream Factory matched then surpassed Leni Riefenstahl’s efforts. Her moviemaking techniques transformed the Nazi hierarchy into demigods. Germans would worship these false idols who led to Europe’s destruction.
Aiding the most evil purposes we may imagine, the German actress/director produced two mesmerizing documentaries, Triumph of the Will and Olympia. Despite their subject matter, both movies are acknowledged exceptional pieces of filmmaking. Techniques Riefenstahl introduced in the mid-1930s have become and remain standard throughout the film industry.
In the seven-part Why We Fight serial, American troops and civilians learned, okay, were indoctrinated into supporting the cause. It helped immensely that actor Walter Huston narrated the series. The stridency of his raspy voice carried might’ve roused the short-fingered vulgarian to ignore his bone spurs and hoist a rifle before leading a first wave assault.
Right. The movies were stirring. But not that stirring.
Three decades after their premieres, my high school cohort watched 5 of 7 episodes. Prelude to War. The Nazis Strike. Divide and Conquer. The Battle of Britain. War Comes to America. Growing up during the Cold War, The Battle of Russia as well as The Battle of China remained unseen until the curious hunted down the absent titles when each became available through a DVD subscription service.
Strangely, a standalone that would’ve fit nicely with the series above, The Negro Soldier, got segregated from the Why We Fight effort. Any need to wonder how that happened?
What means of persuasion weren’t used in the series? The Axis imperiled our peaceful, multi-faith, diverse, prosperous, bountiful home and hearths. If that wasn’t enough, Americans witnessed through newsreel excerpts edited to further pound home the Axis’ bestiality upon its conquered populations. Then of course the final enraging aspect, raising possibilities these same crimes could be committed upon American women and children.
Would be tough for any man to prefer living on his knees after being so entreated. Then.
Today, more American men than we really ought to want to admit wouldn’t object being subjugated, servile, and subservient. On the whole, the less stalwart among our fellow Americans wouldn’t find it such a bad deal. That bunch leans far right on the ideological spectrum. Any farther right those dopes would fall off the planet into space.
After winning the Great Crusade against the Axis, Congress recognized demobilized troops deserved more rewarding receptions than doughboys received. Possibly with the stink of the tear gas used against World War I veterans still in the memories of representatives who’d sat in an earlier Congress which condoned the offenses against the Bonus Army, measures were proposed and approved giving returning vets access to housing and education. Well, some of them.
In theory, the G.I. Bill should’ve covered the whole array of men and women who fought for America. In reality, black vets were often blackballed from being allowed to take advantage of what the bill offered. Few blacks had educational opportunities opened to them. Even fewer somehow qualified for white picket houses in the suburbs.
Therefore, theirs pretty much a similar return as experienced by First World War veterans.
Fortunately, this latter generation had a recent scalding past to motivate them. They weren’t going to be content accept “plenty of nothing” for their overseas service. These men weren’t meekly returning to the margins as had their WWI predecessors.
At first, movement towards fairness and equality were nearly imperceptible. But two distinct events would have bearing on rearranging America’s pattern against blacks. Jackie Robinson making and excelling on a Major League Baseball roster and Harry Truman’s order desegregating the armed forces. Both became pivotal fuses. In their ways, each act further emboldened and encouraged blacks.
Robinson proved blacks belonged in professional baseball. Truman knew the valor shown by blacks in combat demonstrated equal or exceeded the resolve of white combatants. Whatever the Missourian’s personal feelings, he understood limiting the abilities of capable fighting men would disserve the nation. And the unlike the present Oval Office occupant, Truman put our nation first.
Today the United States is atrophying. She is regressing. The current generation and those following will be the first Americans since the nation’s founding who won’t do better than their parents. Upward mobility has stalled after Generation X. Though more technologically advanced, Millennials and those succeeding them won’t have the same paths to excel.
They may only ever know “The American Dream” as a rumor. A fairy tale.
Since 1980, the American drive forward has been steered sideways. Instead of spreading rising prosperity throughout society, money, and, with it, power, all that has been steadily accruing in our country’s further rarefying levels. Day by day the affluent and the lever-pullers they’ve bought draw farther and farther away from the 98% of Americans who create the profits and will, if called, defend our nation.
Or maybe we won’t.
Instead of expressing gratitude and thanks towards the great American people, this crooked administration, aided by absolute reactionaries, perverts our virtues. It seeks to weaken the verities which strengthen us. It wants to foment disillusion and dissolution by pitting Americans against Americans. Of course, since theirs is not a sleek operation, they’re using sledgehammers. One must be blind to miss intentions to plop whites (the less qualified, the better) atop the totem. They hope incessant disparagement of, targeted removals of, and erasures of blacks from authority positions and our public institutions will give life to the lies that the “wrong” complexions or genders can’t contribute, won’t contribute, and haven’t contributed mightily to America.
Thankfully, ours is not the America of the grifter in chief’s cushy youth. Then, in his cloistered world “everybody knew his place.” At 79, the short-fingered vulgarian has yet to realize other Americans’ places are where we make them.
Watching the increasing divergence of leadership from those they lead, we all need to consider this: will the alienated, sidetracked, and indifferent Americans generations inheriting this country fight for it if called?
Again, only until recently could that question have been asked.
Prior generations, even the most marginalized among them, had a connection with our country. Most believed in the idea of America, the one imperfectly set forth by the Founders. Implicit since their day is we strive to create a more perfect union. That’s such an abstract notion, where else could it have bene birthed other than America?
Trying to make a concept “more perfect” when it anchors such imperfections as ourselves. We have ideas. None of us is ideal.
As for those who’d been kept apart from the whole the longest, may we consider them the best Americans? Let us. Despite strenuous efforts to keep blacks on the fringe, we have always believed in what America promised all her citizens. To our credit, we’ve persevered enough to insert that belief into the shared view belonging to majority – the mainstream.
Nonetheless those succeeding receding generations never got those lessons. Somewhere in teaching syllabi the importance of the steps we’ve taken and the distance traversed stopped being applied. That oversight has permitted the hatemongers, the intolerant, and fanatic sectarians seeking to coopt free speech to seed disunion into soft fertile minds. Weakened minds.
Therefore, if a sovereign state should somehow attack the United States, this is a terrific question to ask: Will young Americans sufficiently rally to the national defense? Young Americans, people made to believe their aspirations are stunted, their voices unheard; young people who see little advancement towards worthwhile futures then make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In presuming victory what would be gained by those returning combatants? Another good question. The high and mighty now above us all, have done nothing to endear themselves to the lumpen below they dismiss when not exploiting.
Fact is members of that gilded and burnished community are disassociating from the more earthbound of us as fast as heavenly possible.
They’re the contingent who would benefit best from nobodies defending our land. The affluent would need men and women having next-to-nothing to lose to possibly sacrifice for people who’ve shown no interest in them. Don’t see a whole lot of enlistment centers being jammed based on protecting and maintaining the wealth and possessions of an extremely uncaring minority.
Fight for homes and hearths? Yes. Fight for the investments and the lives of those who seemingly exist to be illustrious? No.
Perhaps AI could develop a Why You Should Fight for Us series. Because any human appeals will simply falter.
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